Projects dry up for e-toll management firm

·17 Jun 2015

Kapsch Trafficom, the Austrian firm contracted to manage the controversial e-toll system, has this week reported a decline in annual revenue – due to the lack of new large toll projects.

Deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa announced the new dispensation for the implementation of the e-toll system in May after the initial system launched in December 2013, was largely rejected by the public, who refused to pay their e-toll bills.

“The projects in Gauteng, South Africa, and in Belarus were in operation for their
first entire fiscal year, with a positive impact on the results,” Kapsch Trafficom said in a statement earlier this week.

However, it noted that the payment rate in Gauteng was still ‘below the planned
values’ while the planned project profitability has not yet been reached.

“The operation projects continued to supply stable earnings contributions,” it said.

“New major orders remained elusive due to a lack of invitations to tender,” Kapsch said.

Before the implementation of e-tolls, Bloomberg reported that Kapsch TrafficCom expected to get an annual revenue boost of “significantly more” than €50 million for eight years from the Gauteng project.

Kapsch Trafficom said that it had distributed more than 1.4 million on-board units (OBUs) for electronic toll collection. This was up from an initial order of 918,000 units to Sanral in 2011.

The group said it increased its headcount by 237 people to 3,545 as of 31 March 2015 compared to 3,308 as of 31 March 2014 – due in part to the take-over of external staff in its South African subsidiary ETC.

Kapsch TrafficCom said that revenue during the fiscal year 2014/15 amounted to €456.4 million, which corresponds to a decline of 6.3 % compared with the previous year.

The profit for the period increased from €2.9 million in the previous year to €11.4 million, it said.